ABSTRACT
"For when we swallow Tiger Woods, the yellow-black-red-white man, we swallow something much more significant than Jordan or Charles Barkley. We swallow hope in the American experiment, in the pell-mell jumbling of genes. We swallow the belief that the face of the future is not necessarily a bitter or bewildered face; that it might even, one day, be something like Tiger Woods' face: handsome and smiling and ready to kick all comers' asses" 2 (fig. 22.1). The hope in "the yellow-black-red-white man," reflected in the Tigermania that swept the U.S. in the mid-90s, is indicative of the racial crossroads at which we, as a nation, find ourselves at the close of the twentieth century. As Stanley Crouch describes, "We have been inside each other's bloodstreams, pockets, libraries, kitchens, schools, theaters, sports arenas, dance halls, and national boundaries for so long that our mixed-up and multi-ethnic identity extends from European colonial expansion and builds upon immigration." 3 Where are we as a nation regarding race when Woods can consider himself "Cabliasian" while some Southern states are still officially ending their "one-drop" rules and laws against mixed marriages? How can we address the concerns of those who see the demise of Affirmative Action and a multiracial category on the 2000 census equally devastating to racial equality? There is a (melting) pot boiling here as we transverse a millennium and the suspense is killing all of us.
